Which ink/toner does the HP LaserJet Pro M404dn use?

The LaserJet Pro M404dn is the wired member of HP's 58A generation of mono workgroup printers, and it produces one of the cheapest pages in our HP catalogue when you feed it the right cartridge.

The M404 takes 58A at 3000 rated pages for $94.99, or 58X at 10000 pages for $178.99. Per page that is 3.17c against 1.79c, so the high yield cartridge cuts the running cost by about 43 percent. On a machine built for volume, buying the 58A is the expensive habit.

HP's data sheet for the M404 series is blunt about the firmware. It reads: dynamic security enabled printer, only intended to be used with cartridges using an HP original chip, and cartridges using a non HP chip may not work, and those that work today may not work in the future. That last clause is the one that matters, because it describes an update arriving later and changing the answer.

None of that makes compatible 58X toner unusable. Plenty of M404 owners run it without trouble. It makes the update the thing to control: hold firmware updates before you fit a third party cartridge, and buy from a seller that will replace stock its chips stop working on. A cartridge refused from the moment it goes in, on a printer that has not updated recently, points at a chip mismatch rather than at dynamic security.